Stephen W. Bushell
Chinese Art
Text: Stephen W. Bushell
Adaptated by: Pierre emmanuel Klingbeil
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ISBN: 978-1-78310-699-8
Stephen W. Bushell
Chinese Art
Contents
Historical Introduction
1. - Ancient Era
2. - Imperial Era
Qin Dynasty
Han Dynasty
Southern And Northern Dynasty
Tang Dynasty
Sung Dynasty
Yuan Dynasty
Ming Dynasty
Chronology
Qing Dynasty
I. Architecture
1. - Roof
2. - Military
3. - Civil
4. - Funereal
5. - Religious
II. Carving and Lapidary Arts
1. - Carving
A. - Wood
B. - Bamboo
C. - Ivory
D. - Bronze
2. - Lapidary Arts
A. - Jade
B. - Hard Stones
C. - Jewellery
III. Manufactured Materials
1. - Porcelain
Classification of Chinese Porcelain.
a. - The Sung Dynasty (960-1279) and the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1367)
b. - The Ming Dynasty (1368-1643)
c. - K’ang Hsi Period, extending from the fall of the Ming Dynasty through the reign of K’ang Hsi (1644-1722)
d. - Yung Chêng and Ch’ien Lung Period (1723-1795)
2. - Enamels
3. - Lacquer
4. - Glass
5. - Snuff Bottles
6. - Dress
IV. Pictorial Art
1. - Primitive Period up to 264 A.D.
2. - Classical Period and the Dunhuang Caves (265-960)
Caves of Dunhuang
3. - From Sung to Ming Dynasty (960-1368)
4. - Ming Dynasty (1368-1643)
5. - The Early Qing Dynasty (1644-1755)
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Anonymous, The Kangxi Emperor (1654-1722)
A Tang poem about the lotus in bloom, c. 1703.
Hanging scroll, ink on silk, 186.7 x 85.3 cm.
Palace Museum, Peking.
The study of any branch of art requires some acquaintance with the history of the people among whom the art was practised. This applies with additional force to China and to Chinese art, a still more distant and less familiar field of study. The native story of the development of Chinese culture makes it nearly as old as the civilisations of Egypt, Chaldea, and Susiana. These empires have long since culminated and disappeared below the horizon, while China has continued to exist, to work out its own ideas of art and ethics, and to elaborate the peculiar script which it retains today. The characters of the ancient Chinese script appear to have originated and developed in the valley of the Yellow River, and no connection has hitherto been satisfactorily traced with any other system of picture writing.
Our knowledge of the ancient empires of Western Asia has been widely increased by recent discoveries due to exploration of the ruins of cities and temples. There are undoubtedly many such relics of ancient China awaiting the spade of the future explorer along the course of the Yellow River and of its principal affluent, the Wei River, which runs from west to east through the province of Shensi, where the early settlements of the Chinese were situated. But they lie deeply buried beneath piles of river silt, blown to and fro by the wind to form the thick deposits of yellow loess which are so characteristic of these regions. It happens only occasionally that a site is laid bare by the river changing its course, or during the digging of canals for irrigation or other purposes, a fruitful source of the discovery of bronze sacrificial vessels and other antiquities. The Chinese attach the highest value to such relics of the ancient dynasties, although they are generally averse, for geomantic reasons, to any intentional disturbance of the soil for their discovery.
The legendary, not to be confused with the purely mythical, period begins with Fu Hsi (c. 2800 B.C.), the reputed founder of the Chinese polity. The second of the three ancient sovereigns, Chu Yung is chiefly celebrated as the conqueror of Kung Kung, the first rebel and the leader of a titanic insurrection in times of old, when he well-nigh overwhelmed the earth with a watery deluge. The third of the San Huang is Shen Nong Shi, the Divine Husbandman, who first fashioned timber into ploughs, and taught his people the art of husbandry. He discovered the curative virtues of herbs, and founded the first markets for the exchange of commodities. With the emperors Yao and Shun we stand on firmer ground, as they are placed by Confucius at the head of the Shu Ching, the classical annals compiled by him, and idealized as perfect models of disinterested rule for all time.
Yao set aside his own son, and called on the nobles to name a successor, when Shun was chosen; and Shun, in his turn, passing by an unworthy son, transmitted the throne to an able minister, the great Yu. Yu departed from these illustrious precedents and incurred the censure of “converting the empire into a family estate,” and since his time the hereditary principle has prevailed. Yu gained his great reputation by the success of vast hydrographic works which continued for nine years until the country was rescued from floods and finally divided into nine provinces. His labours are described in the Tribute of Yu which is found with some modifications in the Shu Ching compiled by Confucius, and in the first two of the dynastic histories - the Historical Memoirs of Ssu-ma Ch’ien (85 B.C.), and the Annals of the Former Han Dynasty by Pan Ku (92 A.D.). He is said to have cast nine bronze tripod vessels (ting) from metal sent up from the nine provinces to the capital, situated near Kaifeng Fu, in the province of Honan. These were religiously preserved for nearly 2,000 years as palladia of the empire. The great Yu is the former of the Hsia Dynasty in company with Chieh Kuei, a degenerate descendant and the last of the line, a monster of cruelty, whose iniquities cried out to heaven, until he was overthrown by Tang, “the Completer” and the founder of the new dynasty of Shang. The Hsia Dynasty was succeeded by the Shang, and the Shang by the Chou.
The Chou Dynasty, which began gloriously with the statecraft of King Wên and the military prowess of King Wu, was consolidated in the reign of King Ch’êng. The last was only thirteen years old when he succeeded, and the regency fell to his uncle Tan, the Duke of Chou, one of the most celebrated personages in history. Tan is ranked in virtue, wisdom, and honours as yielding place only to the great rulers of antiquity, Yao and Shun. He drew up the ordinances of the empire, directed its policy, and acted generally as guardian and presiding genius of the newly created line, during the reign of his brother King Wu, who conferred on him the principality of Lu, and during the first part of that of his nephew King Ch’êng.
The division of the country into hereditary fiefs, conferred upon scions of the royal house and representatives of the former dynasties, led to ultimate disaster. As the power of the surrounding feudatories increased, that of the central kingdom waned, until it was unable to withstand the assaults of the barbarous tribes on the south and west. King Hsüan, a vigorous ruler, resisted the invaders with success; but little more than ten years after his death, the capital was taken by the barbarian tribes, and in the year 771 B.C., his son and successor, King Yu, was slain. The reign of King Yu is memorable for the record in the canonical Book of Odes of an eclipse of the sun on the 29th of August 776 B.C, the first of a long line of eclipses, which give points of chronological certainty to subsequent Chinese history.
His son and successor reigned at the new capital, Lo Yang, and the dynasty, known henceforward as the Eastern Chou, remained there, although its authority gradually dwindled to a shadow, in spite of all the efforts of Confucius and Mencius to reassert its rightful claims. The barbarian invaders were meanwhile driven out by a combination of the two feudal States of Chin (Tsin) and Ch’in, and the old capital was ceded to the latter, which was destined in time to supplant the Chou.
During the seventh century B.C., the power of the empire was swayed by confederacies of feudal princes, and the period (685-591 B.C.) is known in history as that of the Wu Pa, or “Five Leaders,” who figured in succession as maintainers of the Government of the Son of Heaven.
This system of presiding chiefs, or rather of leading States, checked for a time the prevailing disorder; but it was succeeded by the period of the contending States, when the country was again devastated by civil wars, which continued for more than two centuries, until King Nan, in 256, surrendered finally to the Prince of Ch’in and brought the Chou Dynasty to an end.
Anonymous, Qin Shi Huang,
From a 19th c. Korean album, 19th c.
Paper, Folio. British Museum, London.
King Cheng succeeded to the throne of Ch’in in 246 B.C., and in 221 B.C., after he had conquered and annexed all the other States, he founded a new and homogeneous empire on the ruins of the feudal system. He extended the empire widely towards the south, drove back the Hiung-nu Turks from the north, and built the Great Wall as a rampart of defense against these horse-riding nomads. He tried to burn all historical books, declared himself the First Divus Augustus and decreed that his successor should be known as the Second, the Third, and so forth, even down to the ten-thousandth generation. But his ambitious projects came to nothing, as his son, who succeeded as Erh Shih Huang Ti, or Emperor of the second generation, in 209 B.C., was murdered by the eunuch Chao Kao two years later, and in 206 his grandson, a mere child, gave himself up to the founder of the House of Han, Liu Pang, bringing with him the jade seals of State, and was assassinated a few years later.
The civilization of China during the three ancient dynasties would appear to have been, so far as we know, mainly, if not entirely, an indigenous growth. Towards the close of this period, in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., the Ch’in State (Shensi Province) extended its boundaries towards the south and west, and from its name was undoubtedly derived that of China, by which the country generally became known to the Hindus, Persians, Armenians, Arabs and Ancient Romans. About the same time or somewhat earlier, signs of an overland traffic with India, by way of Burma and Assam, appeared in the south-west, started by traders of the Shu State (Szechuan Province), by which route Hindu ideas of forest seclusion and asceticism penetrated and gave a marked colour to the early Taoist cult which sprang up in these parts.
Anonymous, Kublai Khan’s armies
lay siege to the Chinese fortress O-Chou,
Illustration 14th c.Book c. 1590. Paper, Folio.
Golestan Palace, Teheran.
The next dynasty, the Han, was the first to open up regular communication with western countries by sending Chang Ch’ien on a mission to the Yueh-ti, or Indo-Scythes, whose capital was then on the northern bank of the Oxus River. The envoy started in 139 B.C., was kept prisoner for ten years by the Hiung-nu Turks, who ruled Eastern Turkestan, but at last reached his destination through Ta Yuan (Fergana). Travelling through Bactria, he tried to return by the Khotan Lobnor route, but was again stopped by the Hiung-nu, until he finally escaped and got back to China in 126 B.C., after an absence of thirteen years. Chang Ch’ien found bamboo staves, cloth, and other goods offered for sale in Bactria, which he recognised as products of Szechuan, and was told that they were brought there from Shên-tu (India). He reported to the emperor the existence of this southwestern trade between China and India, and also the name of Buddha and of Buddhism as an Indian religion. The grape vine (pu-t’ao), the lucerne (Medicago sativa), the pomegranate from Parthia (Anhsi), and several other plants were introduced into China by him, and were cultivated in the Shang Lin Park at the capital.
The Emperor Wu Ti subsequently sent friendly embassies to Sogdiana, and to Parthia in the beginning of the reign of Mithradates II., and sent an army to Fergana in 102-100 B.C., which conquered the Kingdom of Ta Yuan, and brought back in triumph thirty horses (of classical fame). In the far south, Kattigara (Indochina China) was annexed in 110 B.C., given the Chinese name of Jih Nan, “South of the Sun,” and a ship was dispatched from that port to get a supply of the coloured glass of Kabulistan, which was becoming so highly valued at the Chinese court.
The official introduction of Buddhism followed in the year 67 A.D. The emperor Ming Ti, having seen in a dream a golden figure floating in a halo of light across the pavillion, was told by his council that it must have been an apparition of Buddha, and at once sent a special mission of inquiry to India. The envoys returned to the capital, Lo Yang, with two Indian monks, bringing with them Sanskrit books, some of which were forthwith translated, and pictures of Buddhist figures and scenes, which were copied to adorn the walls of the palace halls and of the new temple which was built on the occasion. This was called Pai Ma Ssu, the White Horse Temple, in memory of the horse which had carried the sacred relics across Asia, and the two Indian sramana lived there until they died. The subsequent influence of Buddhist ideals on Chinese art has been all-pervading, but there is no space to pursue the subject here.
In 97 A.D., the celebrated Chinese general Pan Ch’ao led an army as far as Antiochia Margiana, and sent his lieutenant Kan Ying to the Persian Gulf to take a ship there on an embassy to Rome, but the envoy shirked the sea journey and came back without accomplishing his mission. Roman merchants came by sea to Kattigara (Indochina China) in 166 A.D., appearing in the annals as envoys from the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and later arrivals of Roman traders were reported at Canton in 226, 284. Meanwhile, the overland route to the north, which had been interrupted by the Parthian wars, was re-opened, and many Buddhist missionaries came to Lo Yang from Parthia and Samarkand, as well as from Gandhara in Northern India.
During the period of the “Northern and Southern Dynasties,” when China, from the beginning of the fifth to nearly the end of the sixth dynasty, was divided, Buddhism flourished exceedingly. The Toba Tartars, who ruled the north, made it a state religion, and their history devotes a special book (Wei Shu, Ch. CXIV) to the subject, which gives an interesting account of the monasteries, pagodas, and rock sculptures of the time; with a supplement on Taoism under the heading of Huang Lao, i.e., the religion of Huang Ti and Lao Tzu. In the south the emperor Wu Ti of the Liang dynasty, who reigned (502-549) at Chien K’ang (Nanking), often put on the mendicant’s robes and expounded the sacred books of the law in Buddhist cloisters. It was in his reign that Bôdhidharma, the son of a king in Southern India, the 28th Indian and 1st Chinese patriarch, came to China in 520 A.D., and after a short stay at Canton settled at Lo Yang. He is frequently represented in glyptic art carrying the famous pâtra, the “Holy Grail” of the Buddhist faith, or pictured crossing the Yangtze on a reed which he had plucked from the bank of the river.
In the Sui Dynasty the empire was re-united, and under the Great Tang Dynasty (618-906), which followed, it attained its widest limits. The Tang ranks with the Han as one of the great “world-powers“ of Chinese history, and many of the countries of Central Asia appealed to the Son of Heaven for protection against the rising prowess of the Arabs.
A Chinese general with an army of Tibetan and Nepalese auxiliaries took the Capital of Central India (Magadha) in 648, and fleets of Chinese junks sailed to the Persian Gulf, while the last of the Sassanides fled to China for refuge. The Arabs soon afterwards came by ship to Canton, settled in some of the coastal cities, as well as in the province of Yunnan, and enlisted in the imperial armies of the north-west for service against rebels. Nestorian missionaries, Manicheans, and Jews came overland during the same period, but the Crescent prevailed in these parts and has lasted ever since, the number of Chinese Muslims today being estimated to exceed 20,000,000.
Buddhist propagandism was most active early in the Tang after the headquarters of the faith had been shifted from India to China. Hindu monks, expelled from their native country, brought their sacred images and pictures with them, and introduced their traditional canons of art, which have been handed down to the present day with little change. Chinese ascetics, on the other hand, wandered in successive parties to India to investigate the holy land of the Buddha and burn incense before the principal shrines, studying Sanskrit and collecting relics and manuscripts for translation, and it is to the records of their travels that we owe much of our knowledge of the ancient geography of India.
Stimulated by such varied influences, Chinese art flourished apace, the Tang Dynasty being generally considered to be its golden period, as it certainly was that of literature, belles-lettres, and poetry. However, the Tang power during its decline was shorn, one by one, of its vast dominions, and finally collapsed in 906. The Kitans, who gave their name to Marco Polo’s Cathay, as well as to Kitai, the modern Russian word for China, were encroaching on the north, a Tangut power was rising in the north-west, a Shan kingdom was established in Yunnan, and Annam declared its independence.
Of the five dynasties which rapidly succeeded one another after the Tang, three were of Turkish extraction, and they may be dismissed as being of little account from an artistic point of view.
In 960, the Sung Dynasty reunited, the greater part of China proper, shorn of its outer dominions. The rule of the Sung has been justly characterised as a protracted Augustan era, its inclinations being peaceful, literary, and strategical rather than warlike, bold, and ambitious. Philosophy was widely cultivated, large encyclopedias were written, and a host of voluminous commentaries on the classics issued from the press, so that the period has been summed up in a word as that of Neo-Confucianism. The emperor and high officials made many collections of books, pictures, rubbings of inscriptions, bronze and jade antiquities, and other art objects of which important illustrated catalogues still remain, although the collections have long since been dispersed. During this time, the Chinese intellect seems to have become crystallised, and Chinese art gradually developed into the lines which it still, for the most part, retains.
Anonymous court artist, Portraits of the
Kangxi Emperor in court dress (1662–1722),
early 18th c. Hanging scroll, ink and colour on silk,
278 x 143 cm. Palace Museum, Peking.
The Yuan Dynasty (1280-1367) was established by Kublai Khan (1215-1294) a grandson of the great Mongol warrior, Genghis Khan. The Mongols annexed the Uigur Turks and destroyed the Tangut kingdom, swept over Turkestan, Persia, and the steppes beyond, ravaged Russia and Hungary, and even threatened the existence of Western Europe. China was completely overrun by nomad horsemen, its finances ruined by issues of an irredeemable paper currency, and its cities handed over to alien governors called darughas. A Chinese contemporary writer describes the ruin of the porcelain industry at Ching-tê Chên at this time by exorbitant official taxation, so that the potters were driven away from the old imperial manufactory there, to start new kilns in other parts of the province of Kiangsi.
Marco Polo is astonished at the riches and magnificence of the great Khan, who was really a ruler of exceptional power and made good use of his Chinese conquests. But the culture which surprised the Venetian traveller was pre-Mongolian, and its growth was due mainly to Chinese hands. Even the wonderful cane palace of Marco Polo was actually the old summer residence of the Sung emperors at Kaifeng Fu, in the province of Honan, which was dismantled and carried away piece by piece to be built up again in the park of the new Mongolian capital of Shangtu, outside the Great Wall of China.
The Mongolian era is responsible for some of the remarkable similarities that have been noticed in industrial art work of Western and Eastern Asia, which were then for the first time under the rule of the same house. Hulagu Khan is said to have brought a hundred families of Chinese artisans and engineers to Persia about 1256; and similarly, the earliest painted porcelain of China is decorated with panels of Arabic script pencilled in the midst of floral scrolls, strongly suggestive of Persian influence.
The Mongols were driven out of China to the north of the Gobi Desert in 1368, in which year the Ming Dynasty was founded by a young bonze named Chu Yuan-chang. They raided the borders for some time, and even carried off one of the Chinese emperors in 1449, who, however, was liberated eight years later, to resume his reign under the new title of T’ien Shun, as may be seen in the accompanying list. This is noticeable as being the only change of nien-hao (reign name) during the last two dynasties, whereas in previous lines changes were very frequent.
The early Ming emperors kept up communication with the West by sea, and the reigns of Yung Lo (Zhu Di) (1360-1424) and Hsüan Te are especially distinguished by the career of a famous eunuch admiral, who went in command of armed ships to India, Ceylon, and Arabia, down the African coast to Magadoxu, and up the Red Sea as far as Jiddah, the sea-port of Mecca. Celadon porcelain (ch’ing tz’u) is included in the list of articles taken to Mecca in the reign of Hsüan Tê (1426-35), and it was perhaps one of these expeditions that brought the celadon vases sent by the Sultan of Egypt in 1487 to Lorenzo de Medici. In the next century, Portuguese and Spanish ships appeared for the first time in these seas and Chinese ships were seen no more.
Giulio Aleni (1582-1649),
Complete Map of All Nations, c.1620.
Paper. British Museum, London.
The Qing Dynasty also known as the Manchu Dynasty, was the last ruling dynasty of China from 1644 to 1912. Starting in 1644 it expanded into China proper and its surrounding territories, establishing the Empire of the Great Qing. During its reign, the Qing Dynasty became highly integrated with Chinese culture.
However, its military power weakened during the 1800s, and faced with international pressure, massive rebellions and defeats in wars, the Qing Dynasty declined after the mid-19th century. The collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1912 brought an end to over 2,000 years of imperial China and began an extended period of instability of warlord factionalism
|
Name of Dynasty |
Duration of Dynasty. |
|
Hsia |
2207-1765 B.C. |
|
Shang |
1765-1122 B.C. |
|
Chou |
1122-256 B.C. |
|
Qin |
221-207 B.C. |
|
Han |
206 B.C. - 220 A.D. |
|
Three Kingdoms |
220-265 |
|
Jin |
265-420 |
|
Southern-Northern Dynasties |
420-589 |
|
Sui |
589-618 |
|
Tang |
618-906 |
|
Five Dynasties |
907-960 |
|
Sung |
960-1279 |
|
Yuan |
1279-1368 |
|
Ming |
1368-1644 |
|
Qing |
1644-1911 |
|
Republic of China |
1912 |
|
People’s Republic of China |
1949 |
Map of China.
Wang I-p’eng (15th c.), Inscription on
Wu Chen’s Manual of Ink Bamboo, 15th c.
Album leaf, ink on paper, 38 x 53.1 cm.
National Palace Museum, Taipei.
Juyong Pass, 15th c.
50 km northwest of Peking.
I. Architecture
1 - Roof
2 - Military
3 - Civil
4 - Funereal
5 - Religious
Qi Nian Dian (Altar of Prayer for Grain)
Dragon Phoenix caisson, 1420. Wood. Peking.
China, in every epoch of its history, and for all its edifices, civil or religious, public or private, has kept to a single architectural model. Even when new types have been introduced from the west under the influence of Buddhism and Mohammedanism, the lines have become gradually toned down and conformed to his own standard by the levelling hands of the Chinese mason. It is a cardinal rule in Chinese geomancy that every important building must face the south, and the uniform orientation resulting from this adds to the general impression of monotony.
The most general model of Chinese buildings is the t’ing. This consists essentially of a massive roof with recurved edges resting upon short columns. The curvilinear tilting of the corners of the roof has been supposed to be a survival from the days of tent dwellers, who used to hang the corners of their canvas pavilions on spears; but this is carrying it back to a very dim antiquity, as we have no records of the Chinese except as a settled agricultural people.
Large trunks of the white cedar (Persea nanmu) from the province of Sichuan are floated down the Yangtze river to be brought to Peking to be used as columns for the palaces and large temples.
The cedar is the tallest and straightest of Chinese trees. The grain improves by age, and the wood gradually acquires a dead-leaf brown tint while it preserves its aromatic qualities, so that the superb columns of the sacrificial temple of the Emperor Yung Lo, which date from the early part of the fifteenth century, still exhale a vague perfume.